On 2014/12/04 21:28, Edward Ned Harvey (lopser) wrote: >> From: berg...@merctech.com [mailto:berg...@merctech.com] >> >> My biggest concern about the longevity of disk drives for off-line storage >> would be mechanical. A disk drive has a fair number of moving parts, >> which have been designed to move, not sit still for extremely long >> periods. Many years ago, disk drives were well known for having problems >> spinning up if they were shut down for too long -- typically the problem >> was ascribed to stuck bearings, congealed grease, etc > > One of my cousins is a very well educated librarian. She told me, > decades ago they converted all the old centuries-old fragile paper > books to microfiche, which has all now deteriorated, and the > centuries-old paper books remain unchanged. She was asking me about > data longevity on digital media, which they're currently in process > scanning onto. My answer reaffirmed her suspicion that the new > digital media is probably less reliable than the original paper, but > at least the digital media has the option of being actively upkept, > and will survive as long as you do regular upkeep diligence and > maintain redundancy. > > So print the entire contents of every backup on paper and store the > paper offsite in a waterproof, fireproof box. ;-)
Serious electronic archives run fixity checks and migrate their data to new media with some frequency. They also consume media like I consume chocolate. If you want to know all about media longevity, chat with an electronic archivist some time. Bring a pot of coffee and some snacks. Start near a clean white board with multicolored dry erase pens. At $JOB(N-1), I was sysadmin for both active and "dark" archives, and I learned not to idly bring up longevity issues. The gold standard for longevity may be stone, but the data density sucks. That's why we use "ephemeral" technologies like disk and tape. >8^) Allan _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list Tech@lists.lopsa.org https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
